Marvel's Wolverine

Marvel’s Wolverine is a much-celebrated game currently in development by the gaming company, Insomniac Games. Early this April, Marvel released a teaser trailer for the game letting us have our first look at this exciting new release for one of our favorite Marvel characters.

Although the trailer doesn’t allow players to get behind the wheel, it does immediately show us a great deal about the game. Let’s go over what we’ve seen in the concept work, and what that means for fans of the Marvel universe.

Exceptional detail in graphics—mostly

Marvel’s Wolverine offers some of the best graphics we’ve seen to date. The graphics are every bit as good as Marvel’s Spiderman with the refined detail in the backgrounds, the characters, and most of the main character.

One obvious exception to this is the claws that come out of Wolverine’s hands. It’s important to remember this is concept art and the art isn’t done yet. With that in mind, it’s clear the claws shown in a dramatic close up are just a stand-in for the real thing. The claws are merely drawn in, are flat, and only come out of one knuckle. This is clearly going to be fixed in the final, but is disappointing to look at in the concept art.

Great animation

Outside the animation for the claws, which also aren’t great, the motion of the characters are excellent. Wolverine walks with a swagger that matches his personality, and the other characters all move realistically. Wolverine never seems to move outside of this swaggering walk however, and in some cases looks like his underwear is bunched up rather than walking like a tough guy. Since this is concept art, this is again likely to improve. What the developers have said

In the reveal of Marvel’s Wolverine, Insomniac said, “In the vein of our Spider-Man games, our goal here is to not only respect the DNA of what makes the character so popular, but also look for opportunities to make it feel fresh and truly reflect the Insomniac spirit.”

They also mention they plan to offer cutting edge gameplay, and that the game is in extremely early development—so don’t expect to get your claws in it any time soon. The release date for the game is still to be announced.

Clues about storyline

No story has been mentioned by the developers, however, but there are some clues that may be presented in the trailer. The bar Wolverine is drinking at for example, could be the Princess Bar, located in Madripoor. The location of Madripoor is also potentially backed up by the Radio Lowtown 104.8 poster.

The Princess Bar is where Wolverine likes to hang out when the X-Men are inactive, which may also help to suggest a time period.

Pros:

• Insomniac is the developer

Cons:

• Impossible to tell